


Used To Pain

by samalander



Series: Better Than Silence [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Espionage, F/M, Het, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Mission Fic, Oral Sex, Slow Burn, Spies & Secret Agents, Sweetness, Undercover, Woman on Top, non-AOU compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 03:10:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18885985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: An ending, a beginning. Natasha goes undercover to stop intellectual property thieves and finds more than she ever bargained for.





	Used To Pain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [budapest_by_blimp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/budapest_by_blimp/gifts).



> I know I should have written this like 5 years ago, but thank you to budapest_by_blimp who won a fic from me in Marvel Trumps Hate and asked that I finally finish this series. So, here it is, a long overdue conclusion.
> 
> Thanks to Snows, who read along and said nice things, and Arch, who betaed because she is the goddamn best.
> 
> I cannot count the number of times I listened to Kiita's "[Let's Commit A Robbery](https://soundcloud.com/kiitaofficial/sets/lets-commit-a-robbery-ep-explicit)" EP while writing this. It is by far the soundtrack for this story, and I can't say enough good things about it. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Do you even understand what I went through?_  
>  _Do you even understand what I've been through?_  
>  _Do you even understand that I lied on my grave just so I could be with you?_  
>  _Really wish I could trust you_  
>  _You say sorry and I say fuck you_  
>  _And I know you still think about us though_  
>  _But that's the feeling, I just got used to pain_

The main atrium of the aquarium is cold and dark and cavernous, and behind Natasha small children rattle through, leading their parents by the hand. Natasha is on the second floor, in the twilight glow of the tanks, looking down at the rays that swim below her. She's starting to get bored waiting when she feels his presence at her side.

"Hey, baby," Clint says, and she turns to embrace him, kissing his lips softly. It's strange to kiss him with all the history they share, but it's what the role calls for, so she leans into it like she would any other assignment.

"Hi," she says, turning back to look at the rays again as she reaches down to take his hand.

"Meeting like this," he says, in a low rumble that she knows she's the only one listening to, "I feel like we should have a phrase, like in a James Bond movie. You should ask me something only I would know, or whatever."

"What's your favorite flavor of jam?" she asks, before she even thinks about it.

Clint's laugh is so, so very welcome, and it makes her chest hurt. It’s been eight months since he tried to kick her off the team, eight months since she walked out of his apartment and pretended they could ever be friends. It’s been rocky, and it’s been hard. But after eight months Natasha is still a Delta, and she’s almost convinced herself that she doesn’t resent Clint’s decision.

They've all but gone back to normal, these days; he's saved her and she's saved him and they work together the way they should. It's not easy. It will never be easy, but the work is worth doing.

"You've read Harry Potter?" he asks, amusement coloring the deep rumble of his voice.

Natasha raises an eyebrow. "You've read a book?"

"Seen the movies," he says, tossing her words off his back as if they don't sting. "Report?"

It strikes Natasha, and not for the first time this mission, how weird this all is. How weird and alien it feels to trade banter in an aquarium with one of the very few men she's slept with who is still drawing breath.

"Dr. Cartwright is starting to trust me," Natasha says. "I have a few other targets in the lab. Linda at the front desk is a definite risk, as is Cartwright's grad student Tucker. The other two, Brooke and Alison, are pretty harmless. None of the other undergrads are worth a second look"

"Plan of attack?"

Natasha smiles, tracing an absent pattern on the railing in front of her. She hasn't seen Clint's face since they began this conversation, but she can picture with ease the expression she knows he's wearing, the gentle, kind look he gets when he's encouraging someone to be their best. "Stay the course," she says, as a large turtle with three fins floats serenely through the water below them and children cheer at its appearance. "I need another two to four weeks to get rapport established solidly. Cartwright generally has her students over to her home at the end of the semester, and that'll give me a convenient excuse to snoop."

"That's a month from now," he says. "We need something sooner than that."

Natasha exhales sharply. "Infiltration takes time," she says, biting back her frustration. "I can't just make her trust me. But I'll get into her office next week. It's just the house that has to wait. Unless you want me to break in."

His laugh is subtle, a slight snort of air that sets her heart fluttering again, "You bring your catsuit?"

She smiles and drops his hand. "Wouldn't you love that?"

"What about her husband?" Clint asks, laying his free arm across her shoulder. It's a practiced move, one he does to make the people around them continue to dismiss the two young, attractive people who are standing too close and talking too low in a public place.

"What about him?" Natasha shrugs. "He's not on my list. He doesn't have access to the lab."

She feels Clint shake his head. "Add him to the list. There's something weird about it."

"All marriages are bizarre," she shrugs slightly. "Can you even imagine deciding to be with someone and have no secrets from them?"

He tenses, and it takes her two whole seconds to realize what she’s said, to want to throw herself off of the mezzanine they stand on. No one but him can make her tongue tie itself in knots. 

"Good to know you don't know everything," he says, too airily and sweet by half. 

She smiles and takes a step away from him. "I only pretend to," Natasha grins, catching his hand in hers and giving it a tug. "Let's go see the sharks."

He doesn't fight her-- but she never expected him to. It means the meeting is over. The sharks are on the way out, a twisting ramp that loops around again and again to drop them into the daylight of the harbor once more. She'll duck into the bathroom on the way and he'll go straight out, and no one will think anything about the cute couple they saw. Which is exactly as it should be.

She still holds his hand all the way out, and she tells herself it's for the cover, even though part of her knows it will ache like a bullet wound when she has to let it go.

* * *

The apartment she's staying in is small but well-kept, tucked into a suburb south of the city like a secret that no one should know. Her cover as a young, rich college student requires a roommate, but even that could be much worse; Coryn doesn't complain when she keeps weird hours and never whines about Natasha wanting mushrooms on her half of the pizza. In a perfect world she would live alone, but she understands the need to appear normal. It's one of her many skills.

She's been in Baltimore for the better part of six weeks now, posing as an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins, and it's possibly one of the most boring things she's ever been tasked with doing. She has no interest in most of the classes she has to go to or things she has to learn; she depends a fair bit on briefing packets from sci-tech that show up on her laptop at opportune times just to sound intelligent enough to pass. The real mission, the real prize, is Dr. Cartwright.

She's an insufferable old coot, the kind of woman who is so in love with her Ph.D. that he might as well get the thing printed on a vibrator. But she's also the recipient of a multi-billion dollar contract at the Applied Physics Laboratory to develop key tech for SHIELD and secrets keep leaking out of her lab and into the black markets, so Natasha is here to find the mole and take them out.

It's not like she's the only one who's been hit, either. This is some kind of information syndicate-- the briefing package had a whole list of scientists and engineers who had their shit taken by this group the mole is working with. Hank McCoy, Tony Stark, Hope van Dyne, Helen Cho, Reed Richards, Betty Ross-- they've hit most of the notable scientists in the country, and a few abroad. So Natasha is here, while the leak is going, to see if they can plug them all, for good.

But it's slow. Her position in Cartwright's lab was assured before she came here, but the process of gaining trust as the youngest undergrad is slow and arduous and she wants to scream that she may be twenty-two but she's also killed more people than any of them have ever met.

At least the apartment is nice.

"Hey," she calls, as she bumps the door open with her shoulder. "Corrie?"

Her roommate's car was out front but she doesn't reply when Natasha calls, which probably means she's playing video games in her room, which is par for her Sunday nights. That's fine with Natasha; she doesn't need to see her roommate to know exactly where she is and what she's doing.

Nat's room is the smaller of the two, barely room for her bed and desk and dresser, but it's bigger than anything the Red Room ever gave her, so Natasha isn't exactly inclined to complain. Any room that doesn't involve sadistic landlords who use you as a lab rat is a step up from her childhood, after all.

She opens the laptop on the desk and presses her thumb to the print reader. It does like three kinds of biometric tests, she knows, but they never told her what exactly they were, and she didn't ask. Can't give up information you don't have.

Her email seems innocuous; the one from her advisor is fake, it was the missive to meet Clint today and she deletes it without opening it. The one about group work will be today's study material from sci-tech. The one about frozen yogurt coupons will grant her slightly discounted frozen yogurt, but everyone has a vice.

Tomorrow it's back to classes; back to the lab and making good on her promise to Clint to get into Cartwright's office. Tonight, she opens the study packet, and she reads.

* * *

A position at the Advanced Physics Lab as an undergrad is nothing to be sneezed at. It's prestigious and hard and the other students in her Special Relativity class sometimes look at Natasha like she's a unicorn when she tells them where her internship is. It's phony; she didn't earn it, but she still appreciates that these kids know she's got something up on them, even if they think it's calculus and not the ability to poison them with two common household items and make their death look like an accident. 

She'll take what she can get.

The guard at the front desk of the lab building knows her by now, and barely glances at her badge as she loads her bookbag onto the belt of the scanner. "Hi, Daniel," she says, giving him just the right amount of smile to make sure that he'll have a favor for her if she ever needs it.

"Hey, Nadine," he says, unable to disguise his blush. Daniel is terminally bored with his job and he doesn't get a lot of interest from the young people in this facility. A little goes a long way with him, and it shows in the way he responds to Natasha. He hasn't gotten up the guts to ask her out yet, but she thinks he just might get to take her for coffee before she disappears forever. 

"Long day?" she asks, picking up her stuff on the other side of the metal detector.

"Not a short one," he shrugs, watching her with almost innocent interest. This is their dance, their choreography. "You have a good one now, okay?"

She gives him a smile that he can't be faulted for believing. "Thanks, Daniel," she says, shouldering her bag and heading for the lab. "You too."

The lab is a little bit of a hike from the door, but Natasha takes the time to make sure her mask is in place. Her work is important, and she's one of the chosen few. It's not a mask that takes a lot of effort to put on; the world of science isn't so different from the world she grew up in, no matter what the nerds want to think. Sure, their idea of "publish or perish" is a little more metaphorical than hers had been, but she gets it. Competition, espionage, shitty parking spaces and terrible lunches. Abuse the junior staff as if they'll never rise up and be your boss. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter what veneer it paints on itself.

Linda is at her desk behind the doors for Dr. Cartwright’s lab, looking like she's been sucking on lemons for the last 40 years. She scowls at Natasha as she signs in and gives a cheery wave. "Hi, Linda," Natasha chirps. "How're you?"

"Fine," Linda bites out, her eyes scanning Natasha like she's looking for a detonator. 

"How are your grandkids?" Natasha asks, as if she's oblivious to the hostility. "You see them this weekend?"

The surprise that flicks across Linda's face is noticeable, as if no one else has ever noticed the forty pictures of generic, potato-shaped small humans that decorate her desk. 

"Yeah," Linda says. "Casey brought the boys over."

"Fun!" Natasha grins, leaning in slightly. "Give them a squeeze from me, will ya?"

Linda nods, her face very slightly less puckered than it had been, and turns back to her computer before she has anything that might resemble a meaningful interaction with another human.

Natasha calls it a win and heads back into the lab.

The room they work in is pristine; it's not a clean room in the sense that they have to wear special suits like in the movies, but it's well-organized and logical. Even if she hadn't memorized everything about the complex before she got here, Natasha thinks she would have been able to find her way around pretty easily.

There's a hierarchy of students under Dr. Cartwright, ruled with an iron fist by a savage young woman named Brooke who takes absolutely no shit from anyone, and Natasha kind of loves her. It's not easy to be a woman in any line of work, but the sciences can be especially hostile, and Brooke has not only survived it, but she's made it her own. It's hard not to admire her.

When, of course, she's in a good mood.

"You're late," Brooke snaps, as Natasha enters the room.

She's not. She's exactly on time, but it doesn't do to argue with Brooke if you want to do anything but desolder circuit boards for the next six hours.

"Sorry," Natasha says, ducking her head in faux submission. "I forgot to take my pepper spray off my keys again and Daniel gave me the lecture on weapons."

Brooke's eye roll is audible, the exasperated sigh rolling out of her like fog off the ocean. "Whatever," she snaps. "You're with me in the fabrication lab today. Try not to break anything."

Natasha nods and follows Brooke with the meek display that the other woman expects of her subordinates. The fab lab means they're working on the SHIELD project -- some kind of new cloaking panels for the helicarriers that she's not supposed to know too much about -- and it means she'll probably be carrying and sorting pieces and components all day and, if she's lucky, she might get to input something into the bank of 3D printers that covers the entire east wall.

"Have you taken Quantum Mechanics yet?" Brooke asks, her voice clean and crisp efficiency as Natasha follows her to the fab lab.

"Yeah," Natasha answers. She keeps her answers clipped around Brooke, still trying to give off a sufficiently cowed undergrad and not hint at her true nature. “Well, I’m taking it now.”

"What do you think?" Brooke asks, opening the door to a room that is almost deafeningly loud with the hum of machines.

Natasha shrugs and meets Brooke's eye for a moment. "Feynman was right," she says, allowing a small smile to touch her lips. "I don't think Dr. Ellis understands it, and I sure as hell don't think I totally do, either."

Brooke nods, something like fondness flicking across her face. "The basic idea here is that we want to create a quantum harmonic oscillator that will allow visual disruption and effectively render an object invisible."

Natasha swallows. She wasn't exactly lying about not understanding Quantum Mechanics, and she's a little out of her depth — it's not the first time on this mission that she’s felt that science is bullshit, but she rolls with it and it all falls into place sooner or later. "Okay," she nods.

"There's some foundational work from 2013. Jeng Yi Lee and Ray-Kuang Lee in Taiwan developed the theory of the quantum invisibility cloak, to shield an atom from the quantum entanglements around it," Brooke continues, and Natasha is glad she read that paper in a packet a week or so ago, but this conversation is swiftly flowing over her head and pulling her under. Brooke is clearly a smart woman, probably smarter than Natasha. 

At this. 

It shouldn't be so unnerving to Natasha to be in so over her head in the science; part of her has been askew since she came to SHIELD a year and a half ago, and she's done everything in her power to try and regain her equilibrium. For a while, she thought Clint might be the answer, that she could maybe cling onto him and let him help her even things out. But he brought that to a crashing end in that filthy alley, leaving her angry and shaking and alone, watching him walk away.

And then she thought maybe it could be the team, maybe she could lean on Jess and Bobbi and Sharon and even fucking _Rumlow_ to be her anchors, but they're not the same-- none of them has that same desperate brokenness that Clint had offered her, that same mix of arrogance and charm and the desperate need to be something to someone that vibrated in harmony with her own mess. They're good friends, and she's lucky to have them, but she still doesn't feel like she's the right person.

She doesn't feel like she knows who the fuck she's supposed to be.

Which is why this assignment is so good for her; Hill made it clear when she was moved to Delta that SHIELD frowned on her taking mission after mission without respite. They wanted her to be a person, to have an identity. And at the time, she was sure they wanted that so that they could manipulate it, so that Fury and Coulson and Hill and Barton could stick their fingers into all the places where she hid herself and mess her around.

But undercover allows her to take out little pieces of the people she's known and try them on; here's Bobbi's nervous tick of twirling a pen, here's Clint's long stride that he thinks makes him look predatory, here's Rumlow's dumb stare when he sees a woman in yoga pants. She can try those pieces on and see how they fit, and only keep the parts of other people that make her feel more like her.

"Get it?" Brooke asks, looking at Natasha expectantly. 

Fuck.

"Not really," Natasha says, wishing she could blush on cue. "But I want to."

Brooke nods approvingly. "Well. That's something, I guess. I need you to collect the stability data from the prototypes, okay?"

"Yeah," Natasha says, glancing around. "But I--"

"Don't know how," Brooke says, her voice an eye roll all on its own. "C'mon, then," she gestures for Natasha to follow her. "I'll show you the first one, and we'll see what you can figure out."

Natasha smiles shyly. "Thanks, Brooke," she says, and follows her to the first prototype.

* * *

Work at the lab isn't hard, per se. But it does take focus, and it takes time, and it's been almost 3 hours when Natasha looks up at the clock after Brooke took her leave of the fab lab.

It's almost 5 pm, and that means it's time to see if anyone else has stuck around this late. The grad students will be off to colloquia by now, and she's the only undergrad on Monday afternoons, so the chances are good that she'll be alone. 

Natasha stretches, her back and neck sore from bending to collect and record readouts that she's still not totally sure she understands the point of. Something about efficiency, she thinks, but what that means on a quantum level is likely to be completely different from what it means to normal people. 

She opens the door and looks up and down the hall-- no one directly in sight. Good. She makes her way to the breakroom with the idea of getting a drink of water, smiling to herself as she does. It's a small lab, only 3 full-time grad students, and about 6 undergrads. She doesn't know who pulled what strings to get her here, or which student lost out on her chance, but she doesn't have a lot of time to mourn for what someone else could have had. If she wanders down that corridor, it only leads somewhere maudlin and hard to escape from.

The breakroom is likewise empty, and the smile stays on her face as she fills her water bottle at the cooler and takes a long drink. She's practically skipping with confidence when she knocks at Dr. Cartwright's door, giving her a moment to answer before she reaches for the knob.

And it scares her out of her skin when her voice rings out through the frosted glass. "Come in!"

_Dammit._

The smile is fake but she keeps wearing it as she opens the door and finds her mark behind her desk. 

"Doctor Cartwright?"

Cartwright glances up just long enough for a vague recognition to register on her face. "Yes," she says. She doesn't know Natasha's name, but she knows she should. "Come in, Miss--?"

"Russell," Natasha supplies, sliding into one of the guest chairs. "Nadine Russell. I'm the new undergrad in the lab. And I'm in your Wednesday Contemporary Physics Seminar?"

"Of course," she waves a hand and gives her a smile that Natasha thinks is meant to be disarming. "Sorry, I'm terrible with names. Just ask my husband. Married twenty years, and I think he's called Lawrence. But it could be Lance. Don't quote me."

That actually does earn her a snort of amusement from Natasha. She didn't expect that kind of comedy from someone she's pegged as being utterly up her own ass. She moves Cartwright slightly on the x-axis in her mind, trending from _humorless_ towards _mildly amusing_.

"It's okay," she smiles. "My mom calls me the dog's name more often than not. I'm either used to it, or secretly named Spot."

"What can I do for you, Spot?" Cartwright says, and Natasha is pretty sure that if she's already giving her a nickname, she can get this pompous ass eating out of her hand shortly. But now she has to come up with a reason to be here, something that would draw a student to her teacher's office after hours without just laying down and spreading her legs.

"I'm struggling with String Theory, ma'am," she says, adding an embarrassed duck of the head. "I was hoping you could recommend me some reading, especially on the application of Calabi–Yau space?"

Cartwright's smile is genuine, which Natasha finds especially condescending. This one likes to feel special, likes to be reminded that she's smarter than other people. That's what the jokes are for. Not for the normal things people use them for, human bonding and the like. She's showing off. She's smarter, wittier, faster. It's all a power play with her. And that makes this one of the easiest marks Natasha's had in a while.

But Cartwright turns in her chair and runs a finger along her bookshelf, which gives Natasha a minute to memorize a few things about the office that she might need later-- she's got a luxury hand lotion, she's got abnormal wearing on the number pad of her keyboard, her books are arranged by author rather than subject, and she keeps an extra outfit on the back of the door. _She's cheating on her husband_ , Natasha thinks, when she adds the clothing to the receipt on the top of her trash-- Tic Tacs, lube, and a 20-ounce diet coke at the Walgreens down the street. Not a romance, just a fuck buddy. She idly wonders if it's Brooke, but brushes the idea away. Brooke is many things, but she's not seduced by women like Cartwright.

Natasha stands gently, slipping her hand into the pocket of her jeans as she moves to a bookshelf behind her, picking up a worn copy of _A Brief History of Time_. She idly flips through the pages as she sticks an adhesive nanocamera onto the spine of the book. It's small enough that she can fit it on the tip of her finger, and it's basically invisible to the casual observer once affixed.

"What have you found?" Cartwright asks behind her, and Natasha spins on her toes to show her the book.

"This book-- my dad gave it to me when I was twelve. It's why I wanted to get into physics." She smiles, letting the sadness of her backstory color her voice as she adds, "He was an engineer. I think he'd be so interested in what you do here."

Natasha replaces the book gently onto the shelf, carefully angling it so she'll see the keyboard when Cartwright types in a password, and turns back to the desk.

"So," Cartwright says, making a neat pile of about five books. "Here's where you start. Email me and I'll give you some articles, as well. String theory is hard, and everyone has to work for it. The good thing is, you know that now, and not in five years. Admitting what you don't know is the best way to learn it."

Natasha smiles gratefully and gathers up the books. "Thanks, Dr. C," she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and noting how Cartwright watches her hand as she does. "I won't take up any more of your time."

Cartwright nods at Natasha, echoing her smile in a way that makes Natasha feel angry and annoyed and patronized all at once. "Any time, Miss Russell," she says, offering her hand.

Natasha shifts the books to her left arm and takes her teacher's hand, noting that her palm is slightly damn. _She's nervous,_ she thinks, but it's not because of her. There's something going on here for sure, and she's going to find out what it is.

* * *

Corrie is in the main area of their apartment when Natasha gets home, her arms laden with Dr. Cartwright's books.

"Hey," Corrie says, not looking up from whatever she's watching on the TV.

"Hey," Natasha replies, leaving her shoes and coat in the entryway and dropping her keys and books on the kitchen table.

She'll be expected to be social tonight, which she can handle, but first she heads to her room, changing into yoga pants and a giant t-shirt that is soft from a thousand washes. SHIELD does good work with undercover clothes, she thinks. They make sure to give the life they assign you just enough of a lived-in quality to keep you grounded.

"What are we watching?" she asks Corrie, when she comes back into the room, stepping into the little galley kitchen to find something she wants to eat and coming up with a handful of crackers from a box of off-brand Wheat Thins.

Corrie gives Natasha a quick once over as she sits next to her on the couch, her clear blue eyes sweeping her form up and down in a way that she would call predatory, if she thought her soft roommate had a malicious bone in her body. Natasha has seen Corrie freak out at a spider, she doesn't think the girl has the ability to be anything other than a nice person.

"How on Earth do you not recognize _DuckTails_?" she asks with the same horror and derision Natasha usually gets from people whose relatives she’s killed.

Natasha shrugs. Corrie has hit her Achilles heel, the one thing she can never manage to make matter enough to get it to stick in her mind; 80s pop culture. She does okay with some of it— she likes the late-night soaps like Dallas that had plots and real humans in them. But cartoons all look the same to her; they slide in one ear and out the other.

The only thing cartoons make her think of is training, watching Disney movies in the Red Room bunker and copying the diction of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and the other princesses.

“C’mon,” she smiles, like she isn’t totally annoyed at having to have this conversation with her roommate again. “It’s not like I went back in time and bought a TV for my little self since the last time we had this talk.”

Corrie scowls. “I still can’t believe you didn’t watch Gummi Bears,” she says.

Natasha shrugs, holding up her hands like she surrenders. She can’t pretend to have had a childhood any more than she can pretend to have two heads. “No TV,” she says.

“Fine,” Corrie sighs. “Then we will begin at the beginning. Donald Duck has three nephews.”

* * *

Pizza is ordered and eaten before she knows it, and it’s getting late as the color-coded ducks on the screen beat another adversary and everything is back to the way it was at the beginning of the episode.

“I have homework,” she says, when the ending credits start again. “Can we call this one here and pick up tomorrow?”

Corrie rolls her eyes at Natasha, but there's a smile on her face. “It’s only eight,” she says. “You’re such an old lady.”

Natasha smiles and picks up the plates they were using. “And when I keep my internship and my scholarship next semester, you’ll be big enough to admit that you were wrong?”

“Never,” Corrie laughs, standing and stretching as Natasha drops the plates in the sink. “I’m always right and you know it.”

“Do your homework,” Natasha says, blowing her a kiss. “And if you’re very good I’ll cook for you tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Corrie says, waving her away. “But you’re still old.”

Natasha grins at her. “And way prettier than you,” she says, stepping into her room and closing the door before Corrie can get another quip in.

The homework is a lie; she sends everything she gets off to sci-tech and they take care of her assignments overnight. They still explain it to her in the packets, so she’s fine at exam time, but it doesn’t waste her time when she has to do other things.

The first thing she does is type up a coded report of her day, something that can easily be mistaken for a creative writing exercise by someone who doesn’t know better, but that Clint and the others will know how to decipher. It takes about an hour to do, and by the time she’s done she has a story about sheep in a pasture that makes no sense and will give all the information it needs to.

Her email remains innocuous, not even a request to meet from Clint, so she opens her study packet from sci-tech and starts, once more, to read.

* * *

Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday come and pass with Natasha continuing the routine. By Wednesday she has Dr. Cartwright’s password, but she hasn’t worked out a solid plan to infiltrate the lab unnoticed or undetected. The security is tight, and she isn’t sure which of her human exploits will work out best just yet.

She stays out on Thursday, spends the evening watching the facility and clocking the guards' rotations. It's tight; it's a government facility. These guys aren't fucking around. She knows she could give the credentials to Clint and he could walk in there with a fake badge and a suit and have everyone pouring intelligence into his hands, but this is her mission. This is her first solo since she joined Delta, and her pride or her ego or whatever it is just doesn't want her boss waltzing in and taking it from her.

So she stays, and she watches, and she waits. There is a pattern. There is a hole. She will find it, and she will exploit it and she will complete her mission.

She spends all night in recon, stopping home only long enough to change her clothes and thank whatever gods there are that her roommate isn't there to give her knowing looks as if she spent all night out with some boy.

Natasha suffers through class that day, her mind at the facility, doodling the entry points and the guard rotations and the weaknesses in her notes. She should pay attention, but she has her own discoveries to make; she has her own atom to split.

When she comes home on Friday after class, weary and knowing that she’ll be expected to go out and drink, there's a smell that she doesn’t know how to place in the air, and a number of crumpled tissues and empty bottles next to the couch. The kitchen isn’t quite trashed, but it’s way more filthy than either she or Corrie usually allows; the orange juice sits out, uncapped, on the counter and there's a pot with what looks like burned chicken soup still on the stove.

 _Something is wrong,_ Natasha's training whispers, as she cases her own living area. She has a gun stashed in her room, but that's a good 30 feet from the front door, and she isn't sure what all is waiting between here and there.

A whine and a cough from the couch wake her back up to reality.

"'Deen?" a pathetic voice calls from the couch. "That you?"

Natasha's senses narrow in on the place the voice originated, and she sees a disheveled mop of blond hair and a pair of puffy hazel eyes peering over the back of the couch.

"Corrie?"

"Deen," Corrie whines, her voice high and needy in a way Natasha was never allowed to be. "I don't feel good."

Natasha tenses. Her roommate has been poisoned. Someone was trying to get to her. Someone is sending her a message. She's getting too close. She's--

Corrie sneezes, a violent sound that shakes Natasha from her paranoid spiral. "What's wrong?" she asks, taking a few steps towards her.

She really does look pathetic-- her nose is red as a beet from friction and she's sweating and shivering and just generally radiates misery. Natasha has seen this before, in her team. Seen Bobbi taken down by a stomach bug, seen Jess sweat out the flu. It's something that happens, she knows, to people who don't have enhanced immune systems from their childhood training.

"You look sick, hon," she says, dropping her stuff and taking off her shoes. "What have you taken? And are you drinking water?"

Her roommate groans. "I took NyQuil," she says, her voice still whiny.

"Okay," Natasha nods. She knows how to do this part. Well, she's seen it done. She's never had to care for anyone as useless as Corrie is now before, but she's seen how the other Deltas react when they get a bug. "First, water," she says, moving into the kitchen to survey what they have. "Then soup. And-- maybe mac and cheese? Do you like mac and cheese?"

Corrie smiles when Natasha hands over the glass of water. "Thanks," she says.

"Of course," Natasha says, returning the smile. "Drink. It'll help."

Corrie doesn't even flinch slightly when Natasha reaches out and touches Corrie's forehead with the back of her hand. _This is a person,_ she thinks, _who has never had to be afraid in order to survive._

"I don't think you have a fever," says Natasha, judging as best she can. "Probably you won't die."

Corrie laughs weekly and takes another sip of water. Natasha takes a second to look at her roommate before she heads back to the kitchen to make the promised food. Corrie isn't showing any signs of distress, Natasha thinks, no jaundice or dilated pupils, no breathing issues or dry mouth. Probably not poison, then. Probably just a cold.

Part of her is disappointed. Poison she can fight. A cold just has to be endured.

Making macaroni is easy; Natasha is mostly on autopilot as the water boils and she brings Corrie another blanket and finds her some of her beloved cartoons to watch. By the time the food is ready, Corrie almost looks happy.

Natasha hands over the bowl of brightly orange noodles-- with ketchup, which makes her gag, just the smell of the sugar and vinegar burning her nostrils-- and refills the glass of water. Corrie's face is almost serene, under the red nose and watery eyes.

"Hey," Natasha says. "You good for a few? I want to grab a shower."

Corrie nods, and Natasha takes her leave of her roommate, all but retreating to the bathroom.

* * *

Alone, Natasha takes a moment to study her face, trying to see if the changes in her are external, or just inside.

The woman she was, the woman she had been when she came to SHEILD a year and a half ago, never could have taken care of anyone. She wasn't capable. She was capable of killing, of maiming and of hurting. She could have cared for a mark if it had been the job, but she never would have felt anything even approaching the genuine concern she feels for Corrie. An illness would have been an excuse to off someone.

Nothing is new in the mirror. Nothing has changed about her outside-- her hair is darker and shorter for the cover, but there's no new kindness in her eyes, no tell like those dogs they bred to be friendly. She's been domesticated, she thinks, and now she cares about people and wants to cure them.

She's not herself, and she isn't really sure who she's become.

* * *

Corrie's cold lasts through the weekend, and she's pathetic throughout. Natasha does get a little tired of the requests for blue Gatorade, the need for tissues and the monopolization of the common area, but homework gives her a convenient excuse to step away when she needs it.

It's Sunday afternoon when her email dings with a request from Clint-- the code is pretty simple, but it's the urgent one that means they have to meet tonight.

She responds with a meeting place and makes an excuse about needing to get more Gatorade to escape Corrie and beats a hasty retreat from the apartment before she can ask any questions.

* * *

Clint is in the back of the store, staring at the yogurt like it has the answers to everything he's ever wanted to know.

Natasha sidles up next to him at the dairy case and regards the pre-made cookie dough. "What kind of cookies do you like?" she asks, keeping the smile off her face.

"Rice krispie treats," he says. "Made with cocoa krispies."

She laughs. "Is that a cookie?"

"The retroreflection panels your lab is working on are for sale," he says, instead of answering, and Natasha feels a jolt down her spine like she's in the cold case with the milk. "We got a hit from one of Bobbi's guys, says the seller is motivated.”

"Motivated," Natasha says, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

Clint shrugs and opens the case, selecting something that has sprinkles in it-- of course. "He could be asking a lot more. He's in the hundred thousands, not the millions."

They both freeze as a harried-looking woman stops behind them and clears her throat.

"Sorry," Clint says, staring at his feet as if he's actually embarrassed, before moving out of the way.

The woman glares at them as though they've committed a crime, but she selects some cottage cheese and leaves without a word.

Clint moves, too, heading for the chips, where Natasha just knows he's going to pick something with an anthropomorphic cheetah on the bag that will leave his fingers-- and his bow and arrows-- a neon orange that should never be seen outside of a construction site.

"What does this do to the timetable?" Natasha asks, picking up a bag of popcorn that is pretending to be a healthy snack. "Do I still have time to do this right?"

The buzz of the lights in the store is deafening as he hesitates, and her stomach sinks again.

"We need something in a week," he says. "It doesn't have to be an answer, but we need something. A name, a lead. Something. If we don't get it--"

"You'll have it," she says, setting her jaw. "You'll have it tomorrow."

Clint smiles and picks up his disgusting orange snacks. "Anything else?"

Natasha shrugs. "What's the best Gatorade flavor? My roommate is sick."

His laugh is unexpected, but it sets something right inside Natasha, makes something in her chest feel a little less broken. "Who are you asking?" he says, his voice light. "Purple."

* * *

Natasha doesn't go home when she leaves the store; she doesn't even text Corrie with an ETA on the drink. Instead, Natasha drives straight to the lab.

She looks suitably harried-- she left the house in flip flops and no bra, so all she has to do is mess up her hair and put on mascara that she can smear, and she's the very image of a damsel in distress. 

The face at the security check is a goddamned miracle-- her good old friend Daniel, on a weekend shift for some reason. Natasha makes a big show of rifling through her wallet, her pockets, and then letting a tear slip out of the corner of her eye.

"Daniel," she says, her breath catching on the verge of a sob, exactly the kind of pathetic that a guy like him gravitates towards. "Oh my god, I'm so glad-- fuck, Daniel, I left my Special Relativity book in my lab and I have a test tomorrow and I don't have my badge and I--" she cracks her voice on cue, another tear slipping out. She doesn't know where she learned to cry on demand, but she thinks she probably missed her calling as an actress. Maybe in another life, a more normal life.

"Hey," Daniel says gently. "Nadine, it's okay."

"No it's not!" she snaps. "I need my book!"

He nods and gestures her forward, through the metal detector. "You have your driver's license?"

The little card that SHIELD made her is in her wallet, complete with an unflattering picture, and she hands it over to him.

"Okay," Daniel says. "This time only, yeah? Go get your book. I'll keep this here until you get back."

Natasha throws her arms around his neck and holds him close, feeling how he stiffens against her, how his body goes rigid as she embraces him. "Thank you!" she whispers. "You're my hero!"

Manipulating men is almost too easy, she thinks. It's the first thing she learned after adding and writing, how to make people do exactly what she wants. She doesn't even have to look to know that Daniel is blushing and beaming with pride at how well he did helping her. Instead, she turns and hurries down the hall, letting her footsteps and her smug sense of satisfaction keep her company.

* * *

The lab is empty, which is what Natasha expected at 4 pm on a Sunday, but she still moves silently, listening for any kind of noise that indicates that she's not alone.

She makes it to Cartwright's office and the fool hasn't even locked her door-- no wonder her shit got stolen-- so Natasha brazenly walks in and seats herself behind the desk. She reaches down to turn on the computer, which is when she realizes that something is wrong.

Instead of the light on the power button turning white, it blinks yellow a few times and then turns off. The computer doesn't respond.

There isn't time to do troubleshooting-- if she takes more than about 10 minutes, Daniel will get suspicious, and she can't afford to have him unwrapping himself from around her finger just yet. She curses quietly and wipes her prints from the machine before she lets herself out of the office as silently as she came in.

The next computer, the grad student machine, is in the shared office that the three head assistants occupy. But when she tries to turn it on-- and she's never seen it off before, which is weird-- she gets the same blinking light.

_Fuck._

She doesn't have time to test a third, and even if she did she doesn't think that she'd get better results. Someone has beaten her to the machines, and someone wanted whatever was on them gone. This has to be related to the black market sale of the tech, and it has to be an inside job.

And it's going to derail her investigation when the cops bust in and start asking questions.

Quickly, her thoughts swarming as she moves, Natasha grabs the book she stashed here for emergencies and heads back out to Daniel.

"Oh my god," she says, breathlessly and still letting her voice crack in residual panic. "Daniel, you saved my life. You don't even know. Thank you so much."

He smiles at her and tries to wave it off, but Natasha throws her arms around the security guard again and kisses his cheek warmly. "You are a saint, okay? I'm going to make you cookies. Well, buy them. I don't bake unless you like charcoal? But yes, you. Cookies. Next week. Yeah?"

Daniel laughs and shakes his head, handing her license back as she releases him. "Don't worry about it, Nadine. Really. Just keep better track, okay?"

"Yeah," she nods, feigning chagrin. "Of course. Thanks. I mean it. Life saver."

"Go study," he tells her, and she takes her leave, already composing her email to Clint in her head.

* * *

It’s hard to keep her “interested” face in place during her classes on Monday. Clint acknowledged her report, but hasn’t said anything about what he's going to do about it, and the hours drag by until she needs to go to the lab. There’s no good reason for her to show up early, she isn’t supposed to know about the breach at all, and showing initiative today would be suspicious.

Still, the morning drags and the traffic is nigh torturous on her way to find out what’s going on, so by the time she parks her car and makes it to the front desk, Natasha is considering just killing Daniel and barging in, covert be damned.

Except the guard at the front isn’t Daniel, which throws her until she realizes that it makes sense if he was working last night. Instead of her carefully-cultivated pet security guard, the tall, beautiful woman instructs Natasha to put her things on the belt and step through the detector. Natasha bats her eyes at the guard as she heads through the metal detector, but the woman either doesn’t notice Natasha making goo-goo eyes, or is so far down the Kinsey scale that she’s not interested. Which is rare, but it does happen, and it annoys Natasha every time.

Her heart hammers against her ribs as she walks to the lab— it’s weird, she thinks, she was just there last night, knows exactly what’s waiting for her, but anxiety still gnaws at her. There’s a non-zero chance that they know she was here, and she’ll have to account for what she did and if she took the hard drives.

She’s so stuck in her head that it takes her a full half of a second to register that the person behind the desk isn’t Linda.

It takes her a full second after that to shove her anger down and greet the man who is stuffed into his short-sleeve, button-up shirt and folded behind the desk.

“Hi,” Natasha says, smiling widely. “I’m Nadine Russell, one of the undergrad assistants.”

He takes her hand and shakes it firmly. “I’m Carl,” says the lying mouth of Clint Barton, his eyes twinkling. “Can I see your badge?”

* * *

No one approaches Natasha about her nocturnal activities; people are too busy being in various tizzies and snits to really even pay attention to her. It turns out that the hard drives aren’t the only thing that’s missing; Professor Cartwright never made it into the lab this morning, and her phone isn’t on. Her husband doesn’t know where she is — which doesn’t surprise Natasha, but apparently, the grad students are clueless enough that they don’t know about the affair.

She figures that once Cartwright's done fucking the pain away, she’ll show up.

Linda’s absence is more benign— allegedly one of her adult children has been diagnosed with lymphoma, and she’s taken a sudden leave of absence to go to Iowa and care for the thing. Natasha suspects SHIELD has either paid her off or manufactured the health scare, and she's not sure which is the better option. 

But either way, it explains how Clint is there, but still not exactly _why_ , which is the real mystery as far as Natasha is concerned. Because either he trusts her to do this mission or he doesn’t, and if he thinks that she needs babysitting, then what is she even doing here? Is it because she’s the youngest Delta, and the only one who could still pass as a teenager? Is it some test she’s failed? He could have at least had the decency to warn her. Doing it like this is fucking unprofessional, and it makes her mad as hell that he’s shown up on her op, but she can’t exactly start any shit with him in front of the others. 

It turns out the thieves didn’t just take hard drives— the data backups were corrupted by someone with Cartwright’s authorization— maybe Cartwright herself, which seems like the most horrible option— so there’s nothing for Natasha to do but sit and listen to the grad students decompensate. Tucker looks like he’s going to vomit as he stares out a window, muttering about how many years of research he’s lost. Allison’s eyes are red and puffy as she trails Brooke, who is a human whirlwind. You’d think she was accomplishing something by the way she was stomping around, barking orders and making phone calls, but it’s mostly noise and strife that goes nowhere.

The police have been and gone, the security tapes were seized. But they left a card, letting Brooke and "Carl" know that everyone involved with the lab should stop by and give a statement.

And so, an hour after she gets there, bored of watching human beings collapse on themselves like dying stars, Natasha decides to face the cops, and she heads to the station.

* * *

The police have a lot of questions for her -- not just about the research they do at the lab and her whereabouts during the robbery, but about the other people in the complex. Natasha is impressed that they seem to be mildly competent. 

The detective is a tall, attractive black man with a shaved head-- he reminds her a little of Fury, if Fury was carrying extra weight and had two eyes. His name is Roberts, and he's either a letch or just very interested in the necklace Natasha is wearing. Or both.

"Tell me," Roberts says, meeting her eyes and setting his face to a stern expression that doesn't do anything to intimidate Natasha, "Why were you at the lab last night?"

"I forgot my book," she says, simply. "I had a test in Special Relativity and I needed it."

"And do you know who this is?" he asks, laying a picture in front of her.

Natasha gives in to the impulse to look surprised at the smiling face of Daniel the security guard.

"That's Daniel," she says, trying to sound just a little dumb and a lot scared. "The security guard. He was there last night, too."

Roberts nods. "And he never got home."

Natasha has to do some quick calculus to make that make sense-- she had pegged Daniel as harmless, as someone who was there to be manipulated and used. The idea that he might be involved in this requires a certain amount of recalibration. She'll need to figure that out; is he the mole?

"Does that mean--" she swallows around a lump that isn't quite in her throat. "Was I the last--"

The stony facade Roberts wears melts for a moment, giving way to kind eyes. "No," he says softly, before putting his facade back up. "He checked out to his replacement, got in his car, and his phone turned off when he was halfway home. He didn't want to be followed, I guess. But that makes it hard to think--"

Natasha shakes her head almost desperately. "No," she says. "Not Daniel. He wouldn't."

Roberts shrugs. "Maybe not," he says. "But maybe."

Natasha sleepwalks the rest of the interview-- she doesn't really have anything this man wants, and she's pretty sure she wouldn't give it if she did. But the Daniel thing is throwing her for a loop, and she's trying to piece it together. Had he seen something he shouldn't have? Had he gotten involved with someone? Had he just had a car accident that damaged his phone and sent him into a deeply unlikely coma? Or was he the mole? It was possible, she had to admit it, even if she didn't particularly want to have been so wrong about her pet security guard. There were about a thousand maybes, and she wasn't going to be able to chase any down until she gets out of here.

* * *

Clint sidles up to Natasha as she stands outside of the Sephora at the mall, staring down to the level below.

"Where did you meet me," he breathes in her ear, like that isn't public record for anyone who has access to SHIELD servers.

She had sent him the 911 as soon as she left the police station, and he agreed to meet immediately. Which isn't the usual, but nothing about this day has been.

"Apparently in hell," she snaps. "If the last few years are anything to judge by, Satan."

"Why are you mad at me?" he hisses, matching her anger.

"Because my op is going to hell, and you're playing stupid Harry Potter games," she says, still refusing to look at him.

"Look," Clint tells her, his voice low and almost angry. "It was probably Cartwright. She's probably gone because we were onto her."

"I have a feeling," she says. "Something doesn't add up. Someone--whoever did this, they were too good at it."

Clint watches a group of rowdy boys on the level below them like he's trying to decide who they are. Or what would happen if he shot a dozen arrows through them. Or both. Probably both.

"SHIELD wants to call it," he says. "They think we're done here, and the rest is mop up."

Natasha's heart sinks. "No," she says simply. 

"No?"

"No," she repeats "Give me-- just, give me a week. There's something. There has to be something."

Clint's sigh is long-suffering and somehow both pathetic and condescending. "Okay," he says. "I'll buy you a week. But no more."

"I don't need more," she says. "I can do it in a week."

His voice just sounds tired, like he can't believe they're going to try this. "Do what?" he asks. "What do you think is going to happen here?"

"Look," her anger is finally peaking, annoyed with how he's talking to her and how dismissive he's being of what is a solid hunch. "Look, no one asked you to involve yourself with this, _Carl_. You don't need to be there. But Cartwright isn't the mole. She's just not. She's probably run off with her lover in a poorly timed love vacation, or whatever."

"And Daniel?"

"And Daniel," she sighs. "Daniel could be the mole. Maybe he took the data and knows someone is on to him."

Clint smiles widely. "There it is," he says, and his voice has lost its anger and torpor so quickly that she knows it was a front. "That's how you earn yourself the week, Nat. You give me a good lead."

Natasha wrinkles her nose at him. She doesn't like being treated like a child, and she doesn't like that he felt the need to lead her on a goose chase instead of asking right out, but she can't deny that he got her where she needed to be. She decides not to kill him. This time.

"Okay," she says. "Thanks."

He smiles and touches her back lightly. She tries to ignore how warm his hand is, how his fingertips feel like little flames through her shirt. 

"Any time."

* * *

Corrie has pulled herself off the couch by the time Natasha gets home and actually tidied up the living room, which is a damn relief, in no small part because it means she doesn't have to talk to another human being. 

Instead she heads to her room, kicks off her shoes, and opens her laptop. It only takes her a few moments to find Daniel on social media, but she has a feeling that if it was that easy for her, Roberts the surprisingly competent cop will have already gotten the subpoena to get into his email.

She starts paging through pictures-- mostly of food, trees, and dogs. 

There's something she's missing. There has to be. There's something that can prove that this guy is not what he pretended to be. Not that any of them are.

It's a picture about a week old that starts Natasha out of her reverie. It wouldn't mean much to her except-- it's a bottle of luxury hand lotion. And she's seen that bottle before. That brand, anyway. She checks the date quickly and scans the caption.

_Her heart is soft, but her elbows are dry. #bae #shh #thelittlethings_

"Fuck," Natasha whispers, as she lines the date up-- the day before she saw the same bottle in Cartright's office. "He's not the mole. He's the lover."

The idea of Daniel and Cartwright being a couple sends a shockwave through Natasha's assumptions. She thought she understood both of them so well, and this sets her back on her heels, hard.

So Cartwright was sleeping with the security guard, and they've both disappeared. That certainly lends credence to the "ran away" theory. But that doesn't explain why it was timed with the data breach and the wipes unless one of them was the mole and kidnapped the other. In which case, the innocent one is in danger. 

And then there's the worst idea-- that she's not the only one who knows, and that someone disappeared them both as a cover for their actions. Which is, Natasha has to admit, what she would have done.

Sighing, she opens her email and starts her report to Clint.

* * *

The official orders are to stay put. To keep the cover going, and see what she can learn from the other students. Natasha is fine with that-- she asked for her week, so she'll get it.

But the days drag. The whole department is buzzing about Cartwright, and as one day turns to two and then three, Natasha thinks that it's becoming more and more likely that either Cartwright or Daniel or both is dead.

Her worst suspicions are confirmed on Thursday, four days after they disappear. She shows up to the lab to find another chaotic scene, this time with Brooke crying in the break room while "Carl" the hunky receptionist -- who was not at his desk, Natasha notes -- pats her back and makes soothing noises.

"Brooke?" Natasha asks, putting her bag down. "Did-- did something-- happen?"

She can barely get the words out. It's a good act. She's going to nominate herself for an Oscar, she thinks. Best Supporting Spy.

Clint makes eye contact with her, and she knows what it is before he speaks, because she knows Clint that well, apparently. 

"They found Cartwright," he says, the hitch in his voice giving her a run for her Oscars money. "She's-- gone."

It's shocking, sure, but it's not like Cartwright is the first person to die in the world. The way Brooke is carrying on you'd think she'd just found out death was a thing.

"Fuck," Natasha says, sinking down into a chair. "Is-- was Daniel--"

Clint shakes his head. "No," he says softly, patting Brooke's shoulder again. "Just Dr. Cartwright."

Brooke stands, wiping the tears from her face. "Okay," she says, her voice steady. "Here's what we do. We finish the work. We recreate it, we finish it, we fall back on the quantum invisibility cloak work, fuck it, we call Helen Cho or Tony Stark or Reed Richards if we have to, but we finish the work."

Natasha stares at her for a long moment. "Brooke?"

"Listen," she says, meeting Natasha's eyes. "Nadine. Carl. If she's dead, she's dead. But her ideas aren't. Her contribution doesn't have to be. So dry your eyes. Get back to the fab lab, get back to your desk. We do this because it needs to be done."

Something is off, Natasha can feel it in her bones. How can this woman, who had been deeply inconsolable just a few minutes ago, be so stony serious now? She'd been acting like she knew Cartwright was dead all week, all doom and gloom. And now that she's right, she's suddenly dedicating herself to her dead mentor's work?

No, this isn't right. This isn't right for _Brooke_ , but Natasha can't put her finger on why. She dries her eyes and stands..

"Okay," she says, returning Brooke's gaze. "We do the work."

* * *

It's supposed to look like a suicide, Natasha knows that. Cartwright was found in her car, on the side of a country road, one exit wound in the back of her head. Entry through the mouth and gun still clutched in her hand. But it doesn't add up. 

Nothing about this adds up. Natasha is back at the apartment, making some kind of dinner. It was a long day, and she's not sure it's ever going to be over. 

"Dammit," she mutters, watching the pot of water she must have put on the stove start to simmer.

"Dammit what?" asks Corrie, appearing in the doorway.

Natasha blinks at her roommate. She hadn't even realized Corrie was home, which is pretty telling as to how distracted she really is by this whole mess.

"They found Dr. Cartwright's body today," she says, before she even knows what she's saying. She shakes her head slightly. _Pull it together. You're better than this._

"Oh, Deen," Corrie says, touching her arm. "You okay?"

"Not really," she says, softly. "It's-- a lot."

Corrie nods and opens the fridge, pulling out two cans of the terrible beer she likes. It's a silver can with a one-eyed man on it and a large red banner that reads "National Bohemian" -- a truly mediocre beer that tastes mostly of corn and sweet, but Natasha takes one and echoes Corrie's movement as she raises it to toast.

"To Dr. Cartwright," Corrie says, solemnly. "I never met you, but you employed my roommate, so good job I guess?"

Natasha can't help herself, she laughs. 

"To doing the work," she says, Brooke's words still ringing in her ears. "To ideas that live on."

Corrie clinks their cans, and they both take a drink.

"How are you feeling?" Natasha asks, when she swallows her drink.

The shrug Corrie gives is exactly as noncommittal as it is exhausted. "I went to student health," she says. "They gave me some condoms."

Natasha laughs, taking another swig of the beer. "You'd think for a school that's known for its hospital would have a decent--"

_doctor_

The thought brings her up short. It's what was wrong before. Doctor.

Brooke's list. Helen Cho, Tony Stark, Reed Richards. Stark and Richards, sure. They're engineers and physicists. But Cho is a geneticist. She's a doctor. The only thing she has in common with Richards and Stark is that she's smart, and she's had her work stolen.

But there's no reason for Brooke to have invoked Cho in her speech. She wouldn't be any help to them with Cartwright's work.

"Deen?" Corrie's brow is furrowed, concern painted across her face. "You okay?"

Natasha shakes her head. "Yeah, sorry I just-- it's been-- I need a minute."

Corrie nods and takes a step back. "Sorry."

There's nothing to say, but Natasha can play someone in mourning. She doesn't bother to talk; she just lets her face crack for a moment and slips past Corrie, headed for her room.

* * *

There are trails behind the apartment complex that meander along a little river-- mostly people walk their dogs or cycle along them, but Natasha runs there, when she has time to run. They're peaceful, the trees are tall and grown to shade the path. Sometimes she sees deer.

You're not supposed to use them at night, but this isn't a normal night. Natasha steals out of the apartment after Corrie has called it a night, and she finds Clint standing on the old railway bridge, half-lit by a dim street light that has managed to snake its light through the forest.

"Hi," he says, not looking up. "What was your father's name?"

Natasha blinks, taking half a step back before she remembers the game they've been playing. "I don't know," she says, honestly. "What was your prom theme?"

His laugh warms the night, which is bitten with a chill that Natasha feels like home. "Enchantment under the big top where my mentor beat me half to death," he says, finally looking at her. "Yours?"

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. "Who knew," she says, plastering on a smile. "We had the same theme."

The bridge is sturdy under her feet as she moves to join him, the dark water below adding a certain John Grisham feeling to their meeting. Like they're avoiding being recorded. Like anyone knows enough to record them.

"I think Brooke is the mole," says Natasha, watching his face from the corner of her eye.

There's no surprise there, but Natasha doesn't think she was really expecting any. "Why?" he asks, measured and in control.

"The scientists she listed today-- Cho shouldn't have been on that list. She's not an engineer or a physicist. The only reason I can figure out for Cho to be on Brooke's radar is 'cause her work got stolen."

Clint considers this for a long moment. "Cho's work has some engineering aspects," he says. "She's working on a few machines to regenerate tissue and organs."

If Natasha could see Clint's face, she thinks, she could read him better. As it is, she feels like his voice is a steady lie, like he's been putting on an act for her this whole mission and it makes her want to scream. "That's the work that was stolen," she says, matching his coldness as best she can. "You know that."

"I do," he agrees. "You're right, it's suspicious. But we need more. Brooke could just be the kind of person who idolizes women in science in general."

"I don’t think Brooke idolizes anyone who isn’t in her own mirror,” Natasha scoffs, feeling a little guilty at the satisfaction pooling in her stomach. "But you’re not wrong. We need to know more. So you should ask her out. She was crying on you, she might like to be… comforted by the burly secretary."

Clint shifts uncomfortably, and Natasha feels it like a victory. She's been trying to get back under his skin for so long, to get him to feel her the way she's been feeling him. This is it, this is her moment. 

"Not feeling like fucking for the job?" she says, touching his hand softly. 

"I--" Clint's voice has lost its coldness, its edge, and she thinks she knows exactly what his face would look like, if she could see it. She's seen the look before, the hungry look he gives her when he needs to feel her next to him. She feels warm, like he’s closer than he really is, like she can feel the heat of him cutting through the chilly night. "I can do it," he says, and she feels, rather than sees, him swallow around the lump in his throat.

Natasha squeezes his hand. "You don't have to," she breathes. "There's another way. There's always another way."

"No," he says, turning his hand so his fingers interlace with hers. "Not a way that we can pull off in the three days we have left. I'll text her."

"You have her number?" Natasha says, dropping his hand in surprise.

Clint takes a step back, the moment between them evaporating as quickly as it came, the feeling of his body heat withdrawing and leaving her cold again. "Like you said," he says, his voice edging on unkindness. "She wants to be comforted by the man she was crying on."

It's cold. It's a cold night, and Natasha shivers. At least, she's going to blame it on the air. "Wear a wire?"

"Sure," he shrugs. "Or you can tail me. Whatever. I'll send you info in the AM."

"Okay," Natasha nods. "I-- I guess I'll finish my run."

He moves so quickly that he actually takes her by surprise as he reaches out and grabs her hand again, his palm pressed against hers like a kiss. "Be safe," he says, his voice low.

"You too," she counters, giving his hand another gentle squeeze. "Good night, Clint."

She doesn't wait for a response, just drops his hand and turns on her heel, leaving him alone and wanting, the way she always does.

* * *

Natasha doesn’t sleep well, her interactions with Brooke and Clint slipping through her mind and twisting into shapes that she can’t quite make out yet. If this is jealousy, she’s not a fan.

The morning should seem slow, but the first time she looks at her phone, after her Biological Physics lecture, it’s almost 11:30, and she has a text from Clint. It’s a time, a place, and a date.

 _He’s good,_ she thinks, shoving a book into her bag and deciding to skip her afternoon lab, and ignores the way the numbers seems to burn in the back of her eyes, feeling suspiciously like tears.

* * *

The date, unsurprisingly, is for that night, at a bar on Charles Street. Natasha is there before both of them occupying a booth in the back that’s only lit by the neon signs that lend the place its 80s-dive aura. She’s got it figured out, got her exits covered and her people figured. If this goes south, she knows the shape the world will take. 

She always knows that.

Except they don’t show. Seven thirty comes and goes, and eight, and eight fifteen. Something is wrong. Something has gone sideways outside of her zone, and she can’t see it yet.

The way Natasha sees it, there are a few reasons that this could happen; it could be that Brooke jumped Clint and they’re laying in a sweaty pile in her apartment. It could be that Brooke jumped Clint and he’s lying in a bloody pile in some basement. Anything else, and she thinks he’s have let her know. Hell, he may have let her know if the sweaty option was occurring. That seems like someone who leads a team consisting of an ex-wife and an ex-whatever-they-were would do.

So that leaves bloody in the basement.

Fuck.

She pays her tab and leaves forming a few shapes in her head. Her first step is to track his phone, which is a SHIELD-issued one, so that won’t be hard. Her second step should be to call in backup, but that pulls her up short. Who does she call if Clint is having sex? Bobbi? Rumlow? She doesn’t think Fury will care.

But the train of thought derails when she gets to her car and activates his phone’s tracker on her laptop.

The phone is off, but that’s never stopped SHIELD from tracking someone before, and it won’t stop her now. She enters a quick command and his microphone snaps on, filling her car with sound.

“—afe house Bravo Tango. Awaiting orders.”

It sounds like Brooke, and Natasha curses herself for telling him to get involved in this, for putting Clint in this position. If he's gone, it's her fault. If it's her fault, she's not ready to deal with the fallout. Not from SHIELD, and not from whatever happens in her chest when Clint smiles.

She doesn’t have a lot of choices, she thinks, she’s going to have to save the fucking day.

* * *

The phone tracker resolves to an empty, half rotted-out house on Fulton, which isn’t nearly as surprising as she thinks it should be. This city is a mess, and the number of derelict buildings is, frankly, criminal. She’s surprised that they chose a house, but it makes about as much sense as anything else.

Natasha checks her ammo, grabs a few extra clips and a spare gun, and secures her widow’s bites to her wrists. She’s sent an SOS, but she doesn’t have the time it will take the team to get here. Not if she’s going to get Clint back with all his fingers and toes.

The building is boarded shut, but that didn’t stop Brooke, so there must be a better way in. It takes a moment for Natasha to see the fire escape on the next building, which should lead to roof access. 

And if Brooke got Clint’s body up a fire escape, she’s either a mutant, a super soldier, or both, and Natasha is frankly not ready to consider that. There’s probably a ground level entrance, but Natasha has no intention of using it.

In her experience, people tend to discount aerial assaults on buildings like this, thinking they’re safe if they watch windows and doors. So she scales the rickety metal steps, pausing and doing whatever counts as praying each time they shift and scrape against the building. If she was afraid of death, she’d be terrified.

There’s roof access, a small miracle. Natasha enters the building on her toes, sweeping the hallway and listening for sound. Nothing. Probably Brooke is keeping Clint on a middle level— get a bottleneck at the stairs and control the access points. It’s what Natasha would do. What she had done, back in the days when she had hostages.

She slips down the hall, looking for a second way down— a dumb waiter, a window, a suspiciously spacious vent to shimmy through. She finds what she needs in what used to be a bathroom, the floor rotted and cracked from water damage, a hole just large enough to squeeze through, so she can assault the staircase from behind.

Natasha swallows hard, sets her jaw, chambers a round, and goes.

* * *

Later, Natasha will be able to replay the entire firefight in slow motion, examining the way things went wrong, the missed opportunities and the stupid mistakes. She’ll see the look of surprise on Brooke’s face when she kicks in the door, feel the rush of air as the bullet whizzes by her temple, even taste the tang of blood and sweat and panic in the air as she raises and aims her weapon.

She’ll watch, playing back and over and over, as Brooke dives behind Clint, her own gun raised to his temple, and she’ll see the panicked look of fear in Clint’s eyes for years to come. 

The feeling of the air changing is something that will stay indelible in her memory, Natasha turning and raising her gun to meet the cold, green eyes of the man standing behind her. She doesn’t even take time to register who the person is — _Lawrence Cartwright_ — before she pulls the trigger and kicks out her foot, taking Dr. Cartwright’s husband down with a wound in his neck ( _not fatal just bloody_ ) and a shattered kneecap.

And Natasha will never, ever forget the sickening noise Clint makes when Mr. Cartwright falls, bringing Natasha’s attention back to the tableau he and Brooke have set up in the corner of the room.

In the time it takes to happen— 10 seconds, 20 at the most— Natasha doesn’t think. She doesn’t need to. She just acts, her instincts and training running her like a windup toy. She records the moments for playback later, but she barely experiences them as they happen, lets them wash over her as she moves through.

But the noise Clint makes, the pain and fear and actual panic that color the whimper he lets out, shakes her. What cracks Natasha, slams into her nerves and causes the bile to rise in her throat, is the knife lodged in his side. The rag between his teeth and the rope rubbing his wrists raw behind his back aren’t much better, but the knife is the thing that makes her mouth feel dry.

“Now,” says Brooke, oddly calm for someone who’s about to be fucking murdered. “Black Widow. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Sorry,” Natasha smiles, a baring of teeth that belies no mirth. She takes a step forward, determine to ignore the thousands of threads that fly through her head at the moment, like _how does she know who I am?_ and _what else has Clint told her?_. “I’m afraid I’ve never fucking heard of you, so I can’t use your code name. Give me Clint and you’ll walk away from this.”

He’s bleeding, the red stain slowly seeping into his button-up shirt. Fuck, he dressed up for his date. He probably brought her flowers. Sucker. 

“Back up,” Brooke snaps, pressing the barrel of her gun up under Clint’s chin. Natasha complies. “You think you know what this is?”

“Don’t really care,” says Natasha, slowly moving to the right, making sure her back is to the wall. “Just want to get my partner back. Alive.”

“Oh,” Brooke smiles, baring her fangs the same way Natasha did. “Don’t worry. We don’t take prisoners. We’re just looking for order. And to get that, you’re going to have to take the pain. So what’ll it be, Widow? Emotional? Wanna watch your buddy here bleed to death?”

"No," Natasha shakes her head, but Brooke isn’t playing. 

Swiftly, Brooke reaches down and grabs the knife, twisting it before pulling it free from Clint’s side. He howls in pain again, and slumps forward. It’s just enough— it throws Brooke off balance enough that Natasha has her shot, and she takes it.

The gunpowder smell is sharp in the air as Brooke crumples behind Clint, and Natasha rushes forward. She knows where she hit Brooke, the bullet landing directly between her eyes and leaving a neat little hole as it proceeded to blow out the back of her head. Still, she fires once more as she moves, making sure that Brooke stays where she is.

Natasha reaches Clint in a second and snaps up the knife lying next to him to cut his hands free. She presses her hands into his side, feels the hot sticky blood that’s now more of a river than a stream, and puts pressure on it. “Hey,” she says, meeting his eyes as he removes the gag.

“Hey,” he replies, blinking dimly.

The tears burn in the corner of her eyes, coming unbidden at the worst moment— Mr. Cartwright is still alive, and Natasha can hear his groans and whimpers and she knows that backup is still a few minutes away. Clint can’t die. She won’t let him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, pressing her forehead against his.

Clint shakes his head, his hands finding hers to help apply pressure. “For what?”

“Walking away,” says Natasha, moving her hands to start taking off his shirt, trying to think of the best way to tie a tourniquet around a torso wound. “I don’t want to see you go. I— don’t walk away, okay?”

Clint laughs weakly and Natasha feels relief flood her system as she hears the sirens and the red and blue lights start dancing on the walls around them. “Not going anywhere,” he says, and closes his eyes.

* * *

Roberts, the surprisingly capable police detective, leads the charge into the house, but this time Natasha can show ID, can be who she really is, so she isn't taken into custody and can stay with Clint as the paramedics work.

They find Daniel's body in the basement, and take Mr. Cartwright into custody to figure out where he fits into this twisting tableau. Natasha thinks she knows, though; if Brooke was a spy for the information cartel, she must have found out about Daniel and Professor Cartwright, and used that info to recruit and radicalize the husband. 

It's tragic, all of it. And it doesn't explain why Cartwright and Daniel are dead. But sometimes that's how it is. Sometimes the answers take longer than anyone wants. But they'll get them, in the end.

She's given a blanket and a drink and set in the back of an ambulance as though she might go into shock. But the only thing that actually shocks her is that it takes SHIELD a whole 15 minutes to show up and take over, Phil Coulson issuing orders like he was born to. Bobbi comes and sits next to Natasha, quiet and fidgety, the way Bobbi is.

"So," she says. "You saved him. Again."

Natasha shrugs. "Bad habits die hard, I guess."

Bobbi snorts. "Tell me about it. You know he's crazy about you, right?"

And this is now officially the weirdest part of a very weird evening. It's not every day that one of Natasha's best friends tells her that the friend's ex-husband is into her.

"His bad habit is worse than mine, I guess," Natasha says, instead of anything meaningful.

"Sharon and Jess are at the apartment," Bobbi says. "Getting your stuff."

Natasha nods. She feels a little bad that Corrie is going to need a new roommate, but she's glad she doesn't have to go back and play the role anymore.

Bobbi is watching Natasha very closely. "And I don't know how a smart girl like you failed to notice that the t-shirt on top of your drawer says 'Waverly Archery Club' on it."

"Who says I didn't notice?" Natasha says, smiling coyly. She had noticed. She'd more than noticed; she'd worn it to bed most nights. But Bobbi didn't need to know that. No matter how close they were, there were parts of her that Natasha thought she'd always keep hidden.

Bobbi just rolls her eyes. "Well, tell him, okay?"

Natasha smiles sadly. "Bobbi, if you only knew."

* * *

Natasha gives Clint two weeks to recover, enough time to get sewn up and transfused and sent home again, before she knocks on his door.

She’s bouncing on her toes as she waits for him to answer, the anxiety and excitement of the moment coursing through her— she’s just left headquarters, had the best debrief of her short career, and decided that the person she wanted to see, the person whose congratulations she most wants, is Clint Barton.

The last time she was here, the last time she darkened his doorway was the fateful night they got together to not fuck, and Natasha feels the time between those visits like a brand, like something that defines her, as best she can be defined.

Last time she tried to be what he wanted, tried to be his midwestern cowboy carnie fantasy. Today she’s her. As best she can be— her camel-colored leather jacket and her tight jeans aren’t a ploy, they’re just what she put on this morning. She’s done some makeup, and her hair is back to red, cut just below the ears.

He does a double take when he opens the door, clearly expecting her to be someone else. Or maybe just a different her.

“Hi,” he says, stepping back, and she doesn’t miss the grimace of pain as he does, the way his hand goes to his side.

Natasha steps into the apartment, which isn’t exactly clean, but it does look more like a human being lives here than she expected. “Hi,” she says, letting him close the door. "You hear the news?"

He raises an eyebrow and makes his careful way to the couch, gesturing for her to join him. "Probably, but be vaguer."

The grin on her face is impossible to contain as she joins him and leans in close to half-whisper. "They want me to co-lead Delta."

Clint doesn’t miss a beat. "They?" he asks, and his lack of surprise is just a little disappointing.

“They,” she agrees. "Fury and Hill."

“Congrats,” he offers, nodding his head towards her. “Did you accept?”

Her smile fades a little as she sits back against the couch. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Why?” he asks, watching her face closely.

“Because,” Natasha sighs, running a hand through her hair. “Because I felt like you should get a say.”

Clint, who is an asshole for the record, laughs. He laughs at her, and Natasha feels the color rise in her cheeks.

"Do you think,” he says, softly. “That they decided to offer you without input from the current Delta leader?"

This actually surprises her, though she thinks probably it shouldn’t. "You?" She asks, trying to put the pieces together and figure him out once and for all.

"I chose for you once,” Clint says, studying his palms in a way that makes Natasha want to twine her fingers with his. “I chose me, over Delta. And you set me straight. You're more than qualified to lead. And you just proved to me that the mission comes first."

It’s the most he’s said since she showed up, and something is swelling inside of her, the same something that gets excited and fidgety when he smiles, when they held hands on the bridge that night. "I didn't have to kill her,” Natasha says softly, letting the only real regret she has about the mission sit in the room with them.

"Maybe not,” Clint agrees, and Natasha’s heart skips when he reaches out and takes her hand. “But you also didn't have to keep me and Mr. Cartwright alive. You found the mole, and you got us intel to chase. You succeeded on a solo that no one else would have gotten right. I don't want you to be my right hand, Nat. I want you to be my right brain."

Natasha laughs, which probably makes her an asshole, too. She can’t help it. "That's nonsense," she says.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees, meeting her eyes. “But you love my nonsense.”

The moment hangs, eye contact and held hands, and between them are all the mistakes they’ve made together; the frantic gym sex, the retaliation, the walking away. The things that she thinks any sane man would have cut her off for, but here’s Clint, whom no one could ever accuse of being sane, and he’s holding her hand and asking her to help him lead his team.

Natasha can’t help herself. She leans in and kisses him.

Clint drops her hand, reaches up to cup the back of her head and pull her close, kissing her back like he’s been dying for her, like he’s wanted this as much and as long as she has.

It’s a moment before they come up for air, foreheads pressed together and breath mingling.

"What are we doing?" He asks, tracking her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb.

Natasha smiles and turns her head, kissing the palm of his hand. "Making a serious mistake," she says, and she kisses him again.

Clint’s hands are large and warm and soft and Natasha moans as he runs a fingertip up her spine under her shirt. He kisses like it’s a contest, like he’s trying to show her how deeply he cares, and she thinks she’ll never be able to match his passion, the way he throws himself into everything he does with a wanton abandon.

She turns, straddling his lap and running her fingers through the short hairs at the nape of his neck.

“What turns you on?” she asks, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth.

His breath catches and he arches his back a little. “Huh?” he asks, like he’s lost all language, which is really just fine with her.

Natasha smiles and kisses his lips sweetly. “What do you like?” she says, meeting his gaze when he opens his eyes. “What do you want?”

Clint blinks at her. “We— you know this isn’t our first time, right?”

Her laugh is genuine, the confusion and innocence of the question taking her off guard. His hands tighten on her waist as she laughs, her head falling to rest in the crook of his neck.

“Really?” She laughs again. “I could have sworn it was.”

“Nah,” he says, his smile evident in his tone. “I have a vague memory of a gym, and an alley. I think that was sex.”

They’re both laughing now, holding on to each other and giggling like the kids neither of them ever were. “I never asked,” Natasha says, when she catches her breath. “I just— I knew what I thought about you. But I want to know. What do you like?”

Clint thinks for a second, moving his hand to touch her face again. “I like hearing you laugh,” he says. “It’s sexy.”

“Okay,” Natasha grins at him. “Should I just laugh until you come or--?”

His eye roll is exaggerated and completely undercut by the smile he can’t seem to let go of. “You trust me?” he asks, suddenly serious.

“I do,” she says, honestly. The affection she feels for him is big; it’s overwhelming. But she’s been on his team for over a year, and she’s about to agree to help him lead it. If she didn’t trust him by now, she would be an idiot.

“Hot,” he says, kissing her. “I like trust. I like sweetness. I like— I like it when you surprise me. I like you.”

Natasha shakes her head. “You are a pain in the ass,” she says. “Do you want me to suck your cock or what?”

“Oh,” Clint is laughing again, and this is by far the strangest sex Natasha has ever had. “Oh, yeah. I like that. And I like when you’re on top. And I like kissing you.”

Natasha reaches down and grabs the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head. The stitches on his side stand out dark and black against his skin, and Natasha touches them gently. “You okay with this?” She asks, lowering her mouth to his neck, kissing gently and feeling his pulse speed up under her lips.

“Very,” he says, sighing as her lips meet his skin. “Just be gentle?”

She nods and stands up, taking off her own shirt before she reaches out for his hand. “Let’s go to the bedroom, then?”

Clint takes her hand, lets her pull him to his feet, and steps into her space, kissing her solidly. “Lead on,” he says, and she does.

* * *

It’s not like she’s never seen Clint naked before, but this time when her fingers find his belt she feels it like a triumph, the way he looks at her like she's a fucking miracle. He's not wearing underwear, but he never does, and she takes his cock in her hand, stroking it gently.

"Do you remember," she says, kissing him again. "What I said when I first got you naked?"

Clint groans, and Natasha stifles a laugh again. "Nope," he says, honestly and with a hint of a smile.

Natasha drops to her knees, kissing the side of his dick gently as her fingers continue to slide along the shaft.

"I told you it was a fucking beautiful cock," she says, watching his face for a reaction.

Clint smiles again and reaches down to touch the side of her face. "I do remember," he says, though she's sure it's taking most of his concentration to form words with her hands on him and the promise of her mouth. "And I remember wishing I had an hour to spend, fucking mapping your body with my tongue."

Natasha looks up at him, meeting his eyes for a solid moment. She's not sure exactly what it is she sees there, but she thinks it could be love, maybe, if she was the kind of person who could be loved. And maybe she was, now. She wasn't then, she knew that. But now--

"Granted," she breathes, before opening her mouth wide to take his cock into it.

He actually goes cross-eyed as she sinks her mouth onto him, which is just fucking _delightful_ and she feels a thrill between her own legs at the noise he makes when she runs her tongue up the bottom of his shaft.

Natasha sets up an easy rhythm, keeping it slow and sweet and making sure she's always touching him with at least one hand, always keeping the connection between them active. She loves this, she thinks. It's something she's always loved doing with him, for him. Giving Clint pleasure is rewarding in a way that it never has been with another man. He sighs so sweetly when she sucks him, it makes her want to give him everything she has.

His hips start moving in time with her mouth, getting faster and more desperate until he steps back and pulls himself away from her, gasping for air.

"Fuck," he sighs, tangling his fingers in her hair. "Natasha."

She stands, kissing him again before guiding him to the bed. She doesn't make a show of taking off her clothes before she climbs on top of him, straddling his legs.

"Hey," she smiles, as he reaches up to cup one of her breasts gently. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah," he nods, touching her like she might break. "You?"

Natasha rocks her hips gently, letting him feel the wetness between her legs. "I-- I've missed you. This. Doing this, with you."

Clint touches her face a trace of fingertips across her cheekbone. "Me too," he says. "And-- and we'll make it work, yeah? We can have this, and Delta. We can figure it out."

"You saying you can work with me?" she asks, rolling her hips again.

He nods, moving his hands to her hips, urging her forward towards his cock. "If you can work with me."

It's funny. So much of this is funny. She's surprised at how easy it is to laugh with him, to laugh in bed. It's not a phenomenon she's had much--or any, really--experience with.

"Wanna see how I work?" she grins, raising herself up onto her knees and gripping the base of his cock, slowly lowering herself onto it.

They both let out soft moans as their bodies slide together, the intimacy of the moment gripping Natasha's heart and squeezing like she might die of being so close to another person.

"I fucking love your cock," she breathes, rolling her hips gently once she's got him all the way inside of her.

Clint is pressing fingertip bruises into her hips, his mouth open in shock as she moves, like he hasn't felt this good in months. And the idea that he _hasn't_ \-- that maybe, just maybe, he's been as celibate without her as she has been without him -- is a lot to handle. So instead she focuses on their bodies, on riding him as sweetly as she can, clenching down on his cock and moving with purpose and care.

"Shit," he breathes, when she pauses for a moment, opening his eyes at last to meet hers. "Fuck, you doing good?"

Natasha nods, running one of her hands down the front of her body to rest against her clit, pressing firmly to send a jolt through her. "I wanna come on your fucking beautiful dick," she says, which doesn't sound as sexy out loud as it did in her head, but it seems to work for Clint, who licks his lips and nods, pulling her down into a kiss.

"I wanna see you come apart," he breathes, when he releases her. "Show me."

Natasha does as he asks, starts moving more purposefully and intently, rubbing her clit in time to his thrusts and tossing her head back every time he bottoms out inside of her.

It's intense and wild and, she has to admit, a little sweet. She's never had sweetness before, not in a way she enjoyed. But this is nice, it's good, and it's not too long before she feels her orgasm building, before it crests and falls and she's collapsed onto Clint's chest, kissing him for all she's worth while he does his best to hold still inside of her.

"God damn," she breathes, when she can move again. She sits back up, resting one hand on his chest and shifting to change the angle and start moving again. "Clint, fuck."

"That's right, sweetheart," he breathes, gasping as an aftershock runs through her, causing her muscles to flutter around him. "That's my girl."

Natasha has never been anyone’s girl, but something about the way Clint says it makes her want to be— it makes her chest feel tight and her breath short. “Yeah,” she nods. “Show me. Show me whose I am.”

Clint doesn’t need a second invitation, he rolls them so he’s on top and kisses her deeply, gasping for air with each stroke as he fucks her. Natasha wraps her legs around his waist, taking him deep and sighing every time he hits her just right, wringing more and more pleasure from her body.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, moaning softly as his pace increases, as his rhythm starts to stutter. “Natasha, you’re something fucking special, you know that?”

“Yeah, baby,” she pants, holding on tightly as he takes what he needs from her body. As she gives it to him. “Fuck, yeah.”

He comes with a groan, lets himself go limp and boneless in her arms. Natasha kisses him, rolling them gently onto their sides so she can breathe, but doesn’t make any move to leave, choosing instead to hold him close, counting her breaths and his heartbeats until sleep closes her eyes.

* * *

Natasha finds herself waking up in Clint’s arms, in his apartment, with the sun peeking through the windows. The clock says five A.M., which is when she usually gets up, but she’s never gotten up out of Clint’s bed before, and has a sense that he’s the kind of guy who would sleep until two if given the chance.

Being here feels strange, somehow. Almost wrong. She’s never slept the night with anyone before and let them live to tell about it. She’s never had a night unguarded in a lover's arms and been herself the whole time, and it’s terrifying.

“Hey,” Clint whispers, as she looks up at him, evidently as light a sleeper as she is. “I know— I know I promised you dinner, way back when, but what do you say to breakfast?”

Natasha presses her face into his chest, laughing helplessly. “You’re a sap is what I say,” she responds.

Clint grins and kisses her forehead. “You stayed.”

This is it. This is the moment for her to admit everything to him, to apologize, to see what they can build out of the scattered ashes of who they are. She looks up and studies his face for a moment, looking for the courage to tell him what needs to be said. “You’re under my skin,” she says instead. “And I think I like you there.”

Clint smiles and kisses her gently, sweetly. “For what it’s worth,” he whispers. “You’re under my skin, too. You’ve been there a long time.”

She’s finally getting what he’s been on about all this time, about sweetness. How good it actually does feel. Natasha curls into him, tangling their legs and resting her head over his heart. He pulls her close to him before he takes her hand, entwining their fingers.

“Go back to sleep,” she says, giving his hand a squeeze. “We’ll get bagels in an hour, and then see about what comes next.”

“You’re not walking away,” Clint says, the smile audible in his voice.

“Yeah, well,” Natasha looks up at him, meeting his sleepy hazel eyes in the early morning light. “If you want me to do that, you better get used to waiting.”


End file.
